Tuesday, 9 October 2012

A Cry Comes From the Dawn Pavilion

Tuesday 9 October 2012, 6.30pm Meow, 9 Edward Street, WellingtonWhile Frankfurt slept and the New Zealand Pavilion lay empty, we created another pavilion at the opposite end of the world to celebrate New Zealand as Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The evening, curated and hosted by Pip Adam, featured new poetry and prose from New Zealand, Mexican folk tales, Spanish poetry, German fiction and poems from Switzerland, Italy and Ireland. Pip Adam completed her PhD Creative Writing at Victoria University of Wellington in 2012. Her book of short storiesEverything We Hoped Foris published by Victoria University Press, and won the Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction 2011. She currently teaches Creative Writing and Creative Non-Fiction on Massey University’s Wellington campus. Last week she was named as an Arts Foundation New Generation Awardee. Emma Barnes lives in the Aro Valley in a house that was once a post office. Originally from Christchurch, Emma spent three years living in Japan, teaching English and writing poetry. She has poems coming out in the next Landfall and the next JAAM and has been published previously in both magazines as well as Turbine, Trout, FourW and a variety of other publications. She has been lucky enough to have two poems selected for Best New Zealand Poems, one in 2008 and one in 2010. Geoff Cochrane has published several highly-regarded collections of poetry, including Aztec Noon: Poems 1976-1992 and Into India, Acetylene, Vanilla Wine, Hypnic Jerksand the novels Tin Nimbus, named a 1996 Commonwealth Best First Book Prize regional finalist, and Blood. His poems have also appeared in journals including Sport and Printout and in several anthologies. Geoff’s latest book of poetry is The Bengal Engine’s Mango Afterglow. Kerry Donovan-Brown moved to Wellington in 2006 from Waikuku Beach. He began his studies at Toi Whakaari and very gradually found his way to the IIML. For his MA he is writing a novella (or sometimes a short novel, if he’s aiming to impress) called Lamplighter which is set on the brink of a vast swamp and concerns a man who wards off the dangers that supposedly dwell there. He does this by lighting lamps along its edge. Kerry has a story in Turbine 10 and is looking forward to being published in the up-and-coming Common magazine.

Desirée Gezentsvey has an MA in Creative Writing – Scriptwriting (IIML, VUW) and an MA in Literary Translation (VUW). She has published the bilingual poetry book Next Time Around/la próxima vez (SteeleRoberts), and the poetry/music pieces “Under the Southern Stars” and “An Ocean Between Us” (RNZ). Her play Nuclear Familywon the Best Stageplay Award (Script) at the 2011 Moondance International Festival and has toured to Adelaide, London, Edinburgh, and recently Wellington’s Circa Theatre. Her short film screenplay Fishing for Waves was a semi-finalist at the 2012 MIFF. She recently translated the book Náhuatl Stories: Indigenous Tales from Mexicoby Pablo Gonzáles Casanova (VUP – and going to Frankfurt).

Annabel Hawkins is a third year journalism and expressive arts student at Massey University in Wellington. She likes words and pictures, and somehow they come together on the page. Her work has been published in MASSIVE magazine and spans a broad range of genres including poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction.

Charlotte Simmonds usually lives in Wellington where she sometimes writes poetry, prose and the occasional play. Her work has been published in literary journals such as Sport, Hue & Cry, The Iowa Review and Turbine. Her bookThe World's Fastest Flower was nominated for a Montana Book Award. One of her scripts, The Story of Nohome Neville and Unwholesome Clare Who Worked in the Kitchens and Smelt Like a Dish, was nominated for a Chapman-Tripp. Clearly if the title had been concise enough to fit on the certificate it would have won.

Marco Sonzogni, translator and writer, is Director of the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation and a Senior Lecturer at Victoria University. He has translated all of Primo Levi’s poetry into English, and the translations have been published in numerous journals including PN Review. His Italian-English translation of Oliver Scharpf’s collection of poetry, A Choice of Upper Cuts, came out in 2010. He is currently translating Seamus Heaney’s collected poems into Italian.

Sally-Ann Spencer translates from German to English and is currently writing a PhD on translation at VUW. Hertranslation of Juli Zeh’s The Methodcame out with Random House earlier this year. The Method is Zeh’s fourth novel (two others are available in English) and was followed by a volume on surveillance society, co-authored with Ilija Trojanow. Zeh also writes literary criticism, and an essay of hers on authenticity and fiction (tr. S. Spencer) will be featured in the next issue of Five Dialsmagazine.

Ross Woods, an Irishman who teaches Spanish in New Zealand, comes to us from Dublin via Kelburn. When he gets time away from his day job as a lecturer at Victoria University, he likes to spend his spare time translating poetry, especially that of his friend, the Andalusian poet Pablo Valdivia. A selection of these translations will appear in the first issue of Common magazine this coming December. A translation of Valdivia’s debut collection, Breathing Underwater, will be published by Guernica Editions in 2013.

The Temporary Literaturhaus is a project of the Goethe-Institut New Zealand, the New Zealand Book Council and the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation, with the support of Creative New Zealand.